Before he seized control of Germany and launched a barbaric war that destroyed three continents and killed 50 million people, Adolf Hitler was an ordinary man. In 1919, he was employed by the German Army as an education officer. In the two decades that followed, until the launch of WW2, there were many popitious moments — sliding doors — when Hitler, and the Nazis, could have been stopped and the world saved from destruction.
Schicklgruber
Culprit: Johann Heidler, Hitler’s grandfather
The curious tale of Hitler’s name resulted in one of history’s most consequential sliding doors.
The geneology is a bit confusing. At age 42, Maria Schicklgruber, an Austrian peasant woman, gave birth to an illegitimate son she named Alois. Five years later, she married an itinerant miller named Johann Hiedler, who may or may not have been the boy’s father, but in any case he did not legally adopt the child, who grew up Alois Schicklgruber. When the boy was 10, his mother Maria died and he went to live with relatives. His father disappeared.
Thirty years later, at age 84, Johann turned up in a notary’s office in a nearby town to testify in front of three witnesses that he was indeed Alois Schicklgruber’s father. Alois, now 39, adopted the revised surname of his father: Hitler. Years later, Alois married and fathered a son named Adolf.
Sliding Door: Could Adolf Hitler have commanded such monstrous power with the unwieldy and slightly commical name Schicklgruber? Heil, no!
The Beer Hall Putsch Trial
Culprit: Franz Guertner, Bavarian Minister of Justice
The Beer Hall Putsch was a botched coup d’etat by the fledging Nazi party at the Buergerbraukeller in Munich. Hitler and nine Nazi plotters were arrested to stand trial for treason.
Franz Guertner, a rabid anti-semite and Nazi sympathizer, was the Bavarian Minister of Justice. He made sure the judge and court were compliant towards Hitler.
Hitler was a gifted orator and a genius at propaganda and manipulating public opinion. He knew correspondents from national newspapers would be attending the trial, so from the jump he took control of the proceedings; his fiery opening statement was 4 hours long! The inert judiciary allowed the head conspirator to interrupt testimony, cross-examine witnesses, and address the court with long harangues.
Hitler turned a fiasco into a triumph. Treason carried a lifelong sentence but Hitler received only five years to be served in a “country club” prison. He was out in nine months and used his incarceration to write his infamous memoir Mein Kampf.
Sliding Door: The trial could have resulted in locking up Hitler for good, if only Guertner had not intervened and the court capitulated. Surely the Nazi movement would have withered without its firebrand leader.
Mein Kampf
Culprit: All the non-Nazis who did not read it.
Ascension to Chancellor
Culprit: Von Schleiger, Von Pappen, Hindenberg
Invasion of the Rhineland
Culprit: General
Anschluss
Culprit:
Munich
Culprit: Neville Chamberlin